Stimulus stimulates crowdsourced oversight, activism

A flurry of online campaigns spring up to track, support, and oppose economic …

Open-government advocates have been heaping praise on Barack Obama's early efforts to put technology in the service of transparency. Especially popular has been the planned creation of Recovery.gov to track spending under the stimulus bill passed by the House of Representatives last week and currently under consideration in the Senate. The parking page currently at the site boasts that it will be "part of an unprecedented effort to root out waste, inefficiency, and unnecessary spending in our government." But many aren't waiting for the White House, and a number of online campaigns are already underway to keep crowdsourced tabs on the stimulus—and to mobilize supporters and opponents.

The most recent effort is Stimulus Watch, which launched Monday. While Recovery.gov will rely on an "oversight board" to post updates, Stimulus Watch seeks to crowdsource the task of monitoring stimulus spending on "shovel ready" local projects that have been offered up as potential recipients of federal grants. Each recipient will get a user-edited wiki page describing the state of the project in neutral terms, while discussion pages and a voting system will let visitors weigh in on the worthiness of the endeavor—ideally self-selecting for either geographical proximity or relevant specialized knowledge.

The site is the brainchild of libertarian researcher (and—full disclosure—friend of the author) Jerry Brito, whose theoretical work has focused on "crowdsourcing government transparency." The new site joins older projects like Bailout Sleuth, which tracks the fate of funds disbursed under the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

Of course, the stimulus bill itself has yet to pass, and while the White House has pledged to make "nonemergency" legislation available online for at least five days before it is signed, last week's signing of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act makes clear that this pledge isn't yet operative. Even if it were, the stimulus bill would likely slip through the "emergency" loophole. Hence Read the Stimulus, a site sponsored by an array of conservative groups which makes it easy to search through the bill's 1,588 mind-numbing pages, and link to specific items of interest.

So suppose you've read as much of it as you can stomach: What next? If you're opposed to the stimulus—or just curious about how support for it is faring in the Senate—there's Congress Whip, another conservative-sponsored site, which went live this weekend. With a Senate vote on the stimulus likely this week, users are urged to phone up their senators to determine how they'll be voting on the bill—and, presumably, to warn off any Republicans who might be tempted to break ranks.

And if you're eager to get your stimulus on? In that case, Organizing for America—an attempt to keep Obama's formidable online machine humming under the aegis of the Democratic National Committee—is asking supporters to host house parties at which they watch a video about the recovery package and urge their neighbors to support it. Polls have shown that the stimulus plan is highly unpopular with independents, and has been growing more so over time.